by tyler | Apr 11, 2024 | Tech
Privacy-focused consumer tech company DuckDuckGo launched a new Privacy Pro subscription on Thursday that bundles a VPN service, personal information removal and identity theft restoration.
The plan, which costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year, is currently available only to people in the U.S. This is the company’s first move toward a subscription service built into the DuckDuckGo browser.
DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014, but has so far relied on ad revenue. The subscription service opens up a new avenue for the company to make money.
Image Credits: DuckDuckGo
Image Credits: DuckDuckGo
The VPN uses the open source WireGuard protocol to protect your identity while you visit different sites on the web. The company said that all DNS queries are also routed through DuckDuckGo’s own DNS resolvers, so internet service providers (ISPs) can’t snoop on your browsing history.
With its personal information removal service, DuckDuckGo scans dozens of data broker sites to find details like your name and address. If the service finds your details on any of these sites, it requests removal and also handles email correspondence with them.
Image Credits: DuckDuckGo
Image Credits: DuckDuckGo
The company says that this feature builds on Removaly’s tech, a startup DuckDuckGo acquired in 2022. (At that time, Removaly’s founder, Kyle Krzeski, posted on X that a privacy company acquired the startup without naming it.)
The third feature of DuckDuckGo’s privacy pro plan is identity theft restoration, where an advisor would help you recover your identity-related loss around the clock. This includes financial losses, fixing credit reports by even freezing the report until identity is restored, and replacing and canceling items like driver’s licenses, bank cards, and passports. The company said that the recovery agent would work with you, deal with all the formalities, and follow up with various companies.
Image Credits: DuckDuckGo
Image Credits: DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo says that to ensure user privacy, it maintains no logs of users’ VPN activity, stores data provided during personal information removal on the local device and the company assigns a random ID when users sign up for the Privacy Pro service.
Earlier this year, DuckDuckGo added cross-device syncing for passwords and bookmarks for easy access to this information.
Earlier this year, court filings in the U.S. Department of Justice vs. Google revealed that DuckDuckGo accounted for only 2.5% of general search queries in the U.S. in 2021 and between 0.5% to 2.5% in Europe in 2023.
by tyler | Apr 11, 2024 | Tech
Fresh off the heels of raising $50 million at a $550 million valuation in March, The Browser Company continues to bring in more features to its Arc browser, set up to provide a genuine alternative to Chrome and other dominant players in the internet browser market. Today it is introducing a new feature called Live Folders, which will automatically create and update tabs in a folder based on events like someone adding a file to a shared folder.
Live Folders comes as the company also builds out more AI-powered features to create more dynamic and automated user experiences. One plan has been to build an AI agent that browses the web on your behalf , although this has yet to launch.
The company is launching Live Folders initially with GitHub pull request support. When a user creates a GitHub pull request, Arc automatically creates a Live Folder in the sidebar.
The folder will automatically update tabs based on pull requests you have created, assigned to, requested a review for or mentioned. The folder will automatically clear out tabs with completed requests and tasks.
If there is a new pull request when your Live Folder is collapsed, the browser will peek it out to highlight the new request to you.
Image Credits: Arc Browser (screen capture)
Image Credits: Arc Browser (screen capture)
Arc is aiming to build a new kind of tracking system with this feature to help users with their daily work. The company teased this feature in February . When it asked users about support for types of systems for the Live Folders feature, GitHub was the top requested service.
The company said it is focused on integrating services to Live Folders that are treated toward collaboration, such as Google Calendar, Google Drive and Figma. It added that the tech behind Live Folders is flexible, so it could also adopt things like updates from RSS feeds.
Earlier this month, the startup’s CEO, Josh Miller, announced that the company had hired former Safari designer Charlie Deets and former WhatsApp designer Christine Rode to build different interface designs.
by tyler | Apr 11, 2024 | Tech
Lerato Motloung is a mother of two who works in a supermarket in Johannesburg, South Africa. After her phone was stolen, Motloung had to go without a mobile phone for nine months because she could not afford a new one. Then, in February 2024, she saw a sign about PayJoy , a startup that offers lending to the underserved in emerging markets. She was soon able to buy her first smartphone.
Motloung is one of millions of customers that San Francisco–based PayJoy has helped since its 2015 inception. (She was its 10 millionth customer.) The company’s mission is to “provide a fair and responsible entry point for individuals in emerging markets to enter the modern financial system, build credit, achieve economic freedom, and access digital connectivity.”
Image Credits: PayJoy
Image Credits: PayJoy
PayJoy became a public benefit corporation last year and is an example of a company attempting to do good while also generating meaningful revenue and running a profitable business. And, unlike other startups offering loans to the underserved, it’s doing so in a way that’s not predatory, it says.
“We meet customers where they are — even with no bank account or formal credit history, we create access to financial services and carve a path into the financial system,” said co-founder and CEO Doug Ricket.
PayJoy is applying a buy now, pay-as-you-go model to the estimated 3 billion adults globally who don’t have credit by allowing them to purchase smartphones and pay weekly for a 3- to 12-month period. The phones themselves are used as collateral for the loan.
While the loans are interest free, with no late or hidden fees, the company does mark up the price it charges for the phones by a “multiple,” Ricket said. But it shares the full price upfront before customers sign a contract.
“Users will never pay more than the disclosed amount and can return their phone and walk away debt-free at any time,” he says.
By the fourth quarter of 2023, PayJoy had achieved an annualized run rate of more than $300 million, Ricked told TechCrunch exclusively. That’s up from $10 million in 2020, when it first introduced lending. And the company was “net income profitable” in 2023. It also managed to raise significant capital during a challenging fundraising environment. Last September, PayJoy announced that it had secured $150 million in Series C equity funding and $210 million in debt financing. Warburg Pincus led its equity raise, which included participation from Invus, Citi Ventures and prior lead investors Union Square Ventures and Greylock.
PayJoy has come a long way since TechCrunch first profiled it in December 2015 when it had secured $4.3 million in equity and debt about 10 months after its inception.
Image Credits: PayJoy
Image Credits: PayJoy
Today, the company operates in seven countries across regions such as Latin America, India, Africa and most recently, the Philippines — providing over $2 billion of credit to date. In October of 2023, the company launched PayJoy Card in Mexico, providing customers who have successfully repaid their smartphone loans with a revolving line of credit. Ricket says that PayJoy can “enable cheaper credit and … reduce default rates” by using data science and machine learning to underwrite its loans to assess a customer’s creditworthiness. He says 47% of its customers are women, 40% are new to credit and 37% are first-time smartphone users.
Ricket was inspired to start PayJoy after serving in the Peace Corps following his graduation from MIT. He then spent two years as a volunteer teacher in West Africa, where he became interested in technology in the context of international development. After the Peace Corps, he landed at Google, where he helped create the world’s first complete digital map.
Ricket then moved back to West Africa where he worked for D.Light Design in the pay-as-you-go solar industry. All of that experience has been combined in PayJoy.
The company is on track to achieve over 35% revenue growth this year, with strong momentum in Brazil and new product offerings in development, according to Ricket. Presently, the company has 1,400 employees. It has raised more than $400 million in debt and equity over its lifetime.
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by tyler | Apr 11, 2024 | Tech
Humane today announced the availability of its first product, the Ai Pin. The Bay Area-based hardware startup has been kicking around since 2017, a year after co-founders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri left Apple. Since then, the company has been well-funded, to the tune of $230 million, and focused on building stand-alone AI devices.
Ai Pin is the first of what Humane hopes will be a long line of devices aimed at harnessing the power and popularity of generative AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The system relies on a number of different LLM-based systems, harnessing what it believes to be the best platform for each individual job.
TechCrunch spoke with Bongiorno and Chaudhri about the company’s history and plans for the future. We also picked up one of the devices for some hands-on testing. The Humane Ai Pin is still very much a first-generation product in a number of ways, including reliability and functionality, but the hardware represents a keen attention to detail that betrays its founders origins.
Humane’s vision for the $699 device is one in which a new technology can free itself of its predecessors’ limitations. Specifically this means a voice-based, always-connected device that can help users look up from their phone screens from time to time.
In our recent conversation, Bongiorno described an experience that set the co-founders on the path that would ultimately lead to the pin. “We had gone to this dinner, and there was a family sitting next to us,” she noted “There were three kids and a mom and dad, and they were on their phones the entire time. It really started a conversation about the incredible tool we built, but also some of the side effects.”
The Ai Pin is the first of what will almost certainly be a long line of products riding the generative AI boon. Back at CES in January, Rabbit turned heads with its R1 handheld . The following month at MWC, Brain.AI showed off its vision of a handset that uses generative AI as the core of its novel operating system. The field is already proving to be a diverse one, amid broader smartphone sales struggles.
Humane’s $699 entry point gets you the Ai Pin, an extra battery and an AI charging case. Different color options start at $799. Various accessories are available, ranging from $29 to $49, while the obligatory subscription service will run $24/month. As a sign of good faith, Humane is tossing in three free months with the purchase of a pin.
by tyler | Apr 11, 2024 | Tech
Substack announced on Thursday it’s introducing a few new features for podcasters on its platform. Most notably, the company is rolling out a Spotify integration that will allow podcasters on Substack to sync and distribute all of their free and paid episodes to Spotify’s streaming service. In addition, Substack is introducing new custom audio transcripts and captions, along with improvements to clip sharing and mobile video.
The launch of the new features comes as Substack has announced that podcasters on Substack are collectively earning more than $100 million in annual revenue and that this number has more than doubled in the past year. The number of active podcasters on the platform has also more than doubled in the same period.
The new integration with Spotify will make Substack podcasts discoverable via the streaming service, making it easier for podcasters to reach more listeners. Plus, the integration will allow Substack podcasters’ existing subscribers to listen to paid episodes on Spotify. Substack says the integration with Spotify has the potential to help podcasters earn more, as free listeners will be nudged to upgrade to a subscription.
Podcasters on Substack can set up a Spotify integration by going into their podcast settings, opening the Spotify dropdown, and then clicking the “Sync to Spotify” option to create a new feed with all current and future episodes. Paid episodes are labeled with a padlock, and listeners need to link their Substack account to Spotify to listen to paid episodes directly on the streaming service. Users who listen to
Image Credits: Substack
Image Credits: Substack
Creators can go to their Spotify for Podcasters account to see data about streams, unique listeners, playtime, demographics, and more. Substack plans to make this data accessible via a creator’s Substack podcast stats page in the future.
As for the new custom audio transcripts and captions, podcasters can now upload their own transcript instead of using Substack’s automatically generated one, if they choose. Video podcasters can also opt to upload a separate audio track and free preview to distribute to podcast RSS feeds instead of using the default one extracted from the uploaded video.
Plus, podcasters and their listeners can now share a link to a podcast video at a specific timestamp or download a clip to post on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and X.
Substack says it’s making it easier to watch video podcasts on mobile, as video posts on iOS and Android now feature an inline player. This new capability lets users read and watch at the same time, while also keeping their place in a video they watched partway to revisit it at a later time.
The new features are available to all users starting today.
Substack now lets writers curate a ‘network’ of recommended publications for their subscribers
by tyler | Apr 11, 2024 | Tech
Flipboard, a Web 2.0-era social magazine app that is reinventing itself to capitalize on the renewed push toward an open social web , is deepening its ties to the fediverse, the social network of interconnected servers that includes apps like Mastodon , Pixelfed , PeerTube and, in time, Instagram Threads , among others. On Thursday, the company announced it’s expanding its fediverse integrations to 400 more Flipboard creators and introducing fediverse notifications in the Flipboard app itself.
The latter will allow Flipboard users to see their new followers and other activity around the content they share in the fediverse directly in the Flipboard app. This follows last year’s introduction of a Mastodon integration in the app , replacing Twitter, and the introduction of support for ActivityPub , the social networking protocol that powers the open source, decentralized social networks that include Mastodon and others.
In February, Flipboard announced it would begin to add its creators and their social magazines to the fediverse as well, meaning that the curated magazines of links and other social posts that its creators typically share within the Flipboard app could now find a broader audience. By sharing creators’ posts and links with the wider fediverse, Flipboard’s publishing partners gained their own native ActivityPub feeds so they could be discovered by Mastodon users and those on other federated social apps. That initial push toward federation was started with 1,000 Flipboard magazines and today adds 400 more. In total, Flipboard says there are now over 11,000 curated Flipboard magazines available to federated social networking users.
“This is a major step toward fully federating our platform,” noted Flipboard CEO Mike McCue in an announcement. “We’re not just making curated content on Flipboard viewable, but enabling two-way communication so users can see activity and engage with fediverse communities. Personally, it has made my curation even more exciting as I know it’s reaching new people who may share my interests.”
The expanded set of accounts includes public accounts with one or two public magazines that have activity curated in the past 30 days and don’t have any trust and safety violations. They’ve also participated in Flipboard community programs. Accounts will be alerted to their federated status via email.
While Flipboard is working toward federating its users’ accounts by default, people will be able to “unfederate” by toggling off the “Federate” button in their Flipboard settings.
In addition to the newly federated magazines, Flipboard is also bringing a more integrated fediverse experience to its own app. With the version arriving Thursday (ver. 4.3.25), Flipboard users will be able to see their new followers from the fediverse in their Flipboard Following tab, while their Flipboard notifications will now include fediverse reactions and conversations.
This notification window will now contain three sections: Replies, Activity and News. In Replies, users will be able to see and reply to posts from people both on Flipboard and in the fediverse, as well as any other fediverse @mentions. When they respond, their reply is also sent back to the fediverse, making Flipboard more of a fediverse client app than before. The Activity tab, meanwhile, will show users the likes, follows and boosts (the fediverse’s take on the retweet), along with other Flipboard activity. The News section (previously called Content) will now showcase breaking news and other stories recommended by Flipboard’s editorial team.
The company had already begun curating content for fediverse users across a handful of “news desks” (dedicated fediverse accounts) that directed users to interesting articles and links across topics. There is a broader news desk, plus those dedicated to Tech , Culture and Science . This existing curation can help fuel the newly rebranded News section in the Flipboard app.
